Memory of a felled trunk

Autumn is a cheerful and sad season at the same time. The turning of the seasons gives you the sense of time passing. There is no melancholy, because in autumn nature paints from the palette of its most beautiful colours.

Many times I have let autumn go by without even one hike. But this is my spring, I want to go back to enjoying the mountains with the same enthusiasm as I once did... I can feel the awakening in my legs. I also feel a new energy driving my intentions, it is  the desire to tread mountain paths once more.
For this week's proposal there are no summits in the “catalogue”, rather the hope of capturing in a photo some intense colour, some yellowed tree or some fruit blushing with modesty.
Four sign up for this proposal, and with me... we are five. Valeria, Jon, Elisa, Chiara and Giorgio. A humble little company without many pretensions or many hopes.

The idea is to go to Campo Ceraso, but the Simbruini always seem so far away to me that in the end I suggest something quicker. We are running late and we all agree it's best to find a place we can reach quickly. The destination is Campo Felice, the Miniera di Bauxite (bauxite mine) and... wherever we get to, we put a full stop.
Elisa and Chiara are 11 and 10 years old and we can't mortgage the day on their athletic abilities. So no pretensions on the field.

We reach the Miniera di Bauxite at 10.00 in the morning, it's indecent... I have never started walking so late in the mountains... but there is always a first time.
The path winds through a wood already almost completely stripped of its leaves. There are few chances to photograph those beautiful colours I was expecting from autumn. Never mind.
No pretensions, anything extra that comes along is a gift.
Elisa and Chiara keep up an excellent pace, like any adolescent they need spurring on to keep a steady step. And they hold up well. From the Miniera di Bauxite we climb into the Vallone del Puzzillo, wide and anonymous, marked by erosion and grassy humps. In front of us the semicircular bulk of the Costone, a ridge with two summits (Eastern and Western).

I know that somewhere the Rifugio Vincenzo Sebastiani is hidden, so I spur the girls on to find the hut. To the first one who finds the hut I'll buy a packet of crisps... the things you do to get them walking.

We reach the hut. It's open and the girls from the cooperative welcome us with a lovely plate of tagliatelle with truffle, ready in under twenty minutes.
Once we have finished eating I decide to lead the girls up Cimata Puzzillo (2142m) to give them the satisfaction of having conquered a summit.  The day is complete: 5 kilometres there, a meal at the hut, the conquest of the summit and another 5 kilometres of walking on the way back. There were no pretensions, only improvisation that turned out well.

In the wood there is a felled trunk, I had been with that trunk, years ago... in these very places. Felled for years now, I can't even remember its face.
Autumn has taken our leaves away, autumn has handed over from one generation to the next. Soon new leaves will grow in these woods, new trees will take the place of those that have gone.
But it's strange, I can't even suffer any more, perhaps simply because it was in the nature of things...